Reticulating Splines and decompiled games

Over the past few weeks, there's been a lot of attention paid to decompiling:

A decompiler is a computer program that translates an executable file back into high-level source code. Unlike a compiler, which converts high-level code into machine code, a decompiler performs the reverse process. While disassemblers translate executables into assembly language, decompilers reconstruct higher level representations resembling source languages such as C. Because compilation generally discards source-level information such as variable names, comments, types, and aspects of the original program structure, a decompiler usually cannot reproduce the original source code exactly.

– Wikipedia

Decompiling is a painstaking process, but it turns out that new frontier models are really good at it, meaning that there's a whole bunch of decompiled games to play. Some of these originally required a particular games console, and now are available to play via a web browser. There's even people 'mashing up' games, putting Super Mario in Elden Ring, for example.

Growing up, one of my favourite games was Sim City 2000. It was released in 1993 when I was 12 years old:

The objective of the game is to create a city, develop residential and industrial areas, build infrastructure such as power and water facilities and collect taxes for further development of the city. Importance is put on increasing the standard of living of the population, maintaining a balance between the different sectors, and monitoring the region's environmental situation to prevent the settlement from declining and going bankrupt, as extreme deficit spending gets a game over.

– Wikipedia

It's not exactly the same aesthetic, but Stacktopolis is a homage to the 'disasters' that befall cities in Sim City 2000. I also published a post a few years ago using the game as a metaphor for Open Recognition and Open Badges.

I'm delighted to say that Reticulating Splines is an updated version of Sim City 2000 with lovely graphics and familiar gameplay. There are a few rough edges, but in general it works really well. I'm delighted!